Each game of SpellBounders is quite literally a battle of words.
We can boil its premise down to one simple sentence: multiplayer Scrabble with fantasy RPG trappings.
Of course, Spellwood came up with a similar idea about a year and a half ago, but InsaneRoot's effort is still well worth a look.
Unlike Three Rings Design's take on the king of word games, SpellBounders isn't playing for laughs, and it doesn't pander to those who want a nice gentle tutorial mode or even a single-player campaign.
Zig-zagging zags
SpellBounders throws you right into competitive action, with only a few lines of explanatory text to teach you the ropes.
Once you're on the game grid it'll all make sense - or at least, enough sense to get you going. You have a jumbled line of seven random letters, each with its own value, and you must form the highest scoring words possible.
If your opponent has gone first, then you must use their word to start or finish your own. And so it goes in timeless tile-laying fashion.
That's good, because my letters suck
Of course, there are plenty of embellishments here. You're not just outscoring your opponent - you're fighting them, and every word formed takes a chunk out of their life bar.
Triple and double word scores are out. They've been replaced by three types of bonus square - one that doubles the attack power of the letter laid on top, one that gives you a random instant-use spell, and one that grants you mana and other goodies when activated.
Mana is the finite currency you use to launch each of your chosen fantasy character's three unique special moves. These vary wildly, from restoring health to blocking attacks and swapping out all your letters.
It's a little confusing figuring out how to utilise these to start with, owing to that skeletal tutorial screen, but exploring them with each character is undoubtedly fun.
A Backstab is a critical strike that doubles up on attack strength, usually obtained through long words
SpellBounders works very well as an asynchronous multiplayer word game. But then, it would do. It's Scrabble, and Scrabble is ace.
When it comes to those fantasy embellishments, well, they give and take away in almost equal measure. On the plus side, they add a welcome dose of colour and atmosphere to that (over?)familiar Scrabble board.
Learning each character's abilities is an interesting activity in itself, and winning 'fights' and levelling up is satisfying, even if you are still just playing a virtual boardgame.
But those special abilities also serve to cheapen the core Scrabble action somewhat. The best players will still usually win, but Scrabble purists will balk when their much-mulled-over 40-point word combo is nullified by a cheaply initiated special attack.
As a social and casual word game, then, SpellBounders is slightly flawed. Its colourful new features are tricky to get a grasp on whilst simultaneously serving to dumb down the source material.
But as a simple, fun way to embark on a war of words with your friends, it's pretty irresistible.
SpellBounders
SpellBounders tinkers with the Scrabble template with mixed results, but it's never less than a thoroughly entertaining multiplayer word game
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.